Keeper Review

With Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins burst onto the scene. It may have been his fourth movie, but it represented a stark evolution of his style into something more technically precise, more tonally playful, while still staring into the darkness. That shift, combined with Neon’s brilliant marketing and audience hunger for Maika Monroe’s return to horror, created such a fervor that it became Neon’s highest-grossing domestic film to date, and second-highest worldwide. So it was fortunate for them (and us) that at the time of its release, Perkins had already completed production on two more features. First to come out was horror-comedy The Monkey, an over-the-top, out-of-its-mind, gory good time, which also happened to be the first of three Stephen King adaptations to come out this year. Keeper was the other, although he already has another lined up for next year. No one can accuse the man of slacking off!

Keeper returns to the dour atmosphere of his first two features. Liz and Malcolm (Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland) head to his family’s cabin for the weekend to celebrate their one year anniversary. After being coerced into eating a slice of cake left by an unseen housekeeper (then devouring the rest overnight in a haze of sleep, despite its unseemly contents), Liz is beset by hallucinations and nightmares. When Malcolm is called back to the city to see after a patient, it’s as if the house is out to get her. It begins to creak with the sound of footsteps, people appearing like reanimated corpses appear to her for a moment, and the previously perfect cell reception cuts her off from her best friend back home. Something else may be here…

Except we already know that it is. We don’t know what it is. But Liz had been at the cabin for nary an hour when we see an invisible force draw on the steamed up window behind her bath, unbeknownst to her. That dramatic irony converts what should have been a well-worn yet effective source of tension into impatiently waiting for her to come around. Very reasonably, despite her fear, she’s convinced these images are all in her head. At least, until her disturbing encounter with Malcolm’s cousin Darren (Birkett Turton), in which after forcing his way into the cabin, he wanders around holding a knife before disappearing while Liz is hiding in the bathroom. Thus, the middle of the story becomes tedious, as we wait for Liz to accept what we already know is true, trapping the story in a loop of building tension with no pay off (until the third act).

At least the journey is suitably spooky. The atmosphere is oppressive and eerie, bolstered by the solid sound design and appropriate score. Of course, the centerpiece of any such film will be the design of the visions and the beings within them. Perkins and his team have a special knack for faces that will cause you to shudder, to make a home in your head and refuse to leave, which they also quite adeptly deploy for a handful of masterful silent jump scares. Their movement is otherworldly, a huge credit to the performance of Tess Degenstein, who embodies the main creature Liz sees. And even when they’re just decaying humans, Keeper finds a way to keep you off balance: the vision of Minka (Eden Weiss) is accompanied by a smaller, disproportionate duplicate that seems to shrink as the scene progresses, an image that neither you nor Liz may understand, but will be hard to stop thinking about regardless.

Bolstering the tone is the cast, a credit to casting directors Errin Lally and Annalese Tilling. Maslany and Sutherland are both fantastic at imbuing their romance with a laconic and suspicious vibe. Sutherland’s deep, silky smooth voice has the power to charm anyone, which the movie heavily relies on. Even Turton brings the perfect chaotic, menacing energy to his limited scenes, stepping past simply obnoxious into entitled douchebag. The only odd duck out is Maggie (Tess Degenstein), but that speaks more to the awkwardness of the script largely utilizing her for exposition than performance.

All of these disparate parts fail to come together in a satisfying way, which forces the audience to focus on how messily it conveys its ideas about relationships. Its main thrust is our inability to truly know one another, making it so easy to keep secrets, and for the resulting distrust to spawn unfounded certainty that you’ve figured it out. Additionally, Liz’s character seems designed around the anxiety of being turned into a housewife so slowly and kindly that you don’t notice, an admittedly solid idea that’s never developed further. Misogyny is at the core of the narrative (how could it not be?), but it, too, is left unexplored. A movie doesn’t have to be about something, but when the literal story is not very satisfying, your audience is left to hunt for something to make the viewing worthwhile.

That isn’t to say the movie is without merit, but it is to question whether there’s enough. It’s Perkins’ least successful film since The Blackcoat’s Daughter, but with ten years of filmmaking under his belt instead of none. Granted, much of that comes down to the tone and screenplay, as the technical aspects of Keeper are universally excellent. It’s understandable that the horror filmmaker would want to balance out The Monkey‘s cartoon sensibility, but his overcorrection has resulted in a pretty thud whose value is highest as a fascinating curio. None of this diminishes his previously demonstrated talent, and given his follow up is filming as I write this, one can hope this misfire is quickly forgotten as a one-off.